Men's Tennis Too Strong for #5 Kingsmen

Apr 20, 2012

CMS Men's Tennis used a balanced attack to win two of three
doubles and four of six singles, defeating #5 Cal Lutheran 6-3 in a
SCIAC battle between two of the nation's best teams. Junior Alex Lane (Claremont, CA [pictured
right] led the Stags with wins at #3 doubles and #2 singles.

CMS were first to strike, as the Stags #2 pair Neel Kotrappa (So. - La Verne, CA) and
Brandon Wei (Sr. - Lake Oswego, OR)
notched their fourteenth win in fifteen matches by an 8-3 margin.
Cal Lutheran then evened the match at 1-1 by coming back from a
break down at #1 doubles to earn an 8-5 victory. Then Lane and
senior captain Robbie Erani (New York, NY) put
the Stags up at the break with an 8-5 victory at #3 doubles.

Both Lane and Erani used the momentum from their doubles win to
get out to early one-set leads at #2 and #3 singles respectively,
while freshmen Nik Marino (San Diego, CA) and
Cameron Bernhardt (San Diego, CA)
started slowly but toughed out 7-5 first sets at #4 and #5. Cal Lu
evened the match at 2-2 with a straight set win at #1 singles, but
CMS countered with Alex Johnson's (Jr. - Thousand
Oaks, CA) sixth straight win, and his second at the #6 position. Up
3-2 in matches, CMS got straight set wins from Bernhardt at #5 and
then Marino at #4 to clinch the victory. Lane closed out his two
set win by breaking at 5-6 in the second set to put CMS up 6-2,
before Cal Lu erased a 3-0 deficit in the third set to make the
final score 6-3.

CMS is now 5-0 in conference and travels to #14 Redlands for a
4:00 PM match on Saturday. The Stags can close out the SCIAC
regular season and earn the top seed in the conference tournament
with a win on Saturday.